Owing to the foul weather, the streets were deserted, though the town was still technically ‘in season’, a period that began at the end of April and continued till August. The majority of the tourists were from Europe, though a few Americans and Japanese were also beginning to make an appearance. It was for these overseas visitors that the locals provided the pleasures they themselves found bizarre: hikes up and down the rugged mountain trails and camping in tents on the grassy meadows bordering an azure mountain stream. Some tourists preferred to stay in the Ladakhi hamlets, eating
thukpa
, the local stew of meat and vegetables, and drinking
rakshi
, the barley beer. They would all make it a point to visit the monasteries, citadels to the Supreme that reigned in solitary splendour over stark landscapes, rich with ancient scrolls and artefacts, apart from the ubiquitous prayer wheels, statues of the Buddha and prayer flags fluttering in the wind.
Leh was also one of the last bastions of the flower children. You could still see some of the older ones on the street, rucksacks slung over the shoulders. The newer lot tried to copy their styles, their casual, bohemian clothes and the rasta hairdo, but that was as far as it went; somehow, their eyes never had that dreamy, faraway look so integral to the generation which had started it all. Their successors looked as if they had jobs, families or courses to get back to. Ganja was freely available and the dollar went a long way. You could get your palm read, your body massaged, your past incarnations invoked, or squat, unbathed, and urinate on the street and, with luck, bed down with someone of your sexual preference after a night of getting stoned on hemp, with no questions asked. There were no Big Mac outlets. The police were understanding and discreet. It was hippie heaven.
The second – and possibly more important – source of attraction for tourists was that Leh was now the nearest they could get to Tibet in terms of people, customs and architecture, as well as altitude, climate and landscape. Judging by the same criteria, there were subtle differences between the two, but the fact remained that both Tibet and Buddhist mysticism had an ardent following. The muted protests of scholars, if any, were muffled by commercial considerations.
Ashton and his group entered the town soon enough and passed through narrow, steeply inclined streets. On either side stood shops, their doors shut against the foul weather. They drove past some signs in English and in what appeared to be an Oriental script.
Peter turned to Susan and asked, ‘Can you read that?’
‘I think I’ll get it. It resembles classical Tibetan,’ she replied.
‘And you?’ he asked Duggy, who shook his head.
‘This is Buddhic, the Ladakhi script, madam,’ Dinesh offered eagerly, leaning over the front seat to convey the information. He had obviously been listening in on the conversation.
They nodded at him.
‘First time in Leh, sir?’
Dinesh, they realized, was a talkative little man.
‘Yes,’ Ashton replied. ‘Heard a lot about it. Thought we should give it a try.’
‘Would you like to try some expeditions or mountaineering?’
‘Certainly, that would be nice. We don’t have much experience, though.’
Ashton was finding it difficult to carry on a conversation. He was bent almost double in the van’s cramped confines and his head kept hitting the roof as the vehicle bumped along the uneven road.
‘No problem, sir,’ Dinesh went on, unfazed. ‘You have come to the best place. We have lots of experience and we are very honest.’ His round face darkened in a scowl which gave it a comical look. ‘Not like the thieves that have started operating here. I wonder why the government doesn’t do something about them.’
Ashton remained silent. The sentiment that the government should shut down the competition was universal.
The van had picked up speed and was moving jerkily through the winding roads. The heaviness in Ashton’s head had increased. The car suddenly screeched to a stop in front of a gate that led into an enclosure whose walls were made of stones piled one atop another. Within the compound stood a double-storey wooden building with a pagoda-shaped roof. The driver hopped out and pushed open the heavy iron gate. Then he got back in and drove into the compound, letting the vehicle come to a halt in the portico. Dinesh jumped out and opened the door of the van for them.
‘Welcome to Hotel Summer Harvest,’ he announced with a smile.
Dinesh swung open the hotel’s main door for them and they walked in, entering a dimly lit corridor. He quickly shut the door behind them to keep the cold out. Then he stepped behind a counter and pulled out some forms which he handed over to them. He also unhooked some keys from the board behind the counter. Evidently, the hotel was short on staff.
‘Please follow me, sir,’ Dinesh said. Then turning back with a grin, he asked, ‘You wanted separate rooms, sir?’
His eyes were on Susan and Peter.
‘Yes,’ Susan said firmly, unable to stop herself from giving Peter a quick, sideways glance.
Peter looked amused. They went up a narrow wooden staircase which creaked under their weight. A smell of damp, burnt butter and sweet incense hung heavy in the air and the carpeted floor was soggy under their feet.
The four rooms reserved for them on the first floor stood at the end of the corridor and faced each other. Dinesh unlocked and opened the door to one. Ashton motioned Susan to enter. Dinesh followed her in. Ashton waited for him to come out after showing her the room. Dinesh then opened the door to another room and ushered Ashton in, before moving ahead to unlock the doors to the rooms assigned to the others.
Ashton’s room was comfortable enough and overlooked a rivulet. A kerosene heater that emitted a blue flame burned in one corner with a humming sound. Ashton, who had been feeling dizzy, found that the faint smell of burning fuel made him slightly queasy. The double bed looked soft and inviting. Contemplating it, he realized how tired he was.
‘I have left some forms on the table, sir. Please fill them up at your convenience,’ Dinesh returned to tell him. ‘You can drop them off at the counter in the lobby.’ He turned to leave, then came back. ‘Sir, please remember to turn off the burner before you fall asleep. It’s a reliable make, but why risk carbon monoxide poisoning?’
Ashton thanked the man and shut the door after him. He put his suitcase on the bed and unpacked methodically. He went up to the table, opened a bottle of mineral water and poured it into a glass. A strip of capsules had been placed next to the glass. He picked it up and examined it: Diamox. Ashton had read that at these altitudes, one capsule a day was the normal dosage. He popped one into his mouth and washed it down with water. He changed into a pair of shorts and got into bed, covering himself with the soft quilt that had been kept folded at the foot of the bed. The quilt was too short for him and his feet stuck out, but he was used to that. Curling up so that he was fully covered, Ashton settled down and fell asleep almost instantly.
They all slept through the day and the night as well. Only Duggy asked for a meal to be sent up to his room.
Ashton woke up on the second day after their arrival in Leh. He looked at his watch. It was mid-afternoon. After using the toilet and splashing some water on his face, he lit a cigarette and emerged from his room to see if Susan was up. The corridor outside was freezing. He knocked on Susan’s door.
‘Come in,’ she called out.
Ashton turned the knob and entered. He found her sitting on the bed in lime-green pyjamas, brushing her hair. There was a tray with a teapot and mugs sitting on it, which meant she had been up for some time.
She indicated the bed, inviting him to sit down, but he picked up an ashtray from the writing table and sat on a chair next to the bed.
‘How are you feeling?’ he asked.
‘All right. A bit groggy, but that’s because I’ve just woken up. My head’s clear. And you?’
He shrugged, indicating that he was okay.
‘Did you remember to switch the burner off?’ he asked, looking at her.
Her eyes were screwed up against the smoke he had just exhaled and her cheeks glowed red from the heat of the burner.
‘I did remember,’ she replied, ‘but decided against it. It was just too cosy in the room and by the time I remembered, I was already tucked in.’
There was a knock on the door and Peter came in wearing a pullover that stretched to his knees. He was carrying a book. He nodded at Ashton and began speaking to Susan.
‘I suppose now seems as good a time as any to tell me the story so far?’ he asked, drawing up a stool and sitting on it facing her. ‘That is, if you’re feeling okay?’
Susan nodded. ‘I’m fine.’
The team members hadn’t had much time to interact with each other in Delhi.
‘I’ve updated him till around the time you and Duggy went off to follow the Ralph Wando lead and you told us you had found something to work with,’ Ashton told Susan. ‘So you might as well start the story from there.’
‘Well,’ she began, clearing her throat and shuffling through her notes, ‘what we have to go on is something I copied from Ralph Wando’s Bible – now with his former manservant, Aaron. It has the standard stylized wordings of a
paiza
, an etched metal passport of sorts given by the Mongol emperor to his emissaries to ensure they received assistance and safe passage during their voyages.
‘It is unlikely that Wando Sr understood the import of what was written on the
paiza
. But this much is certain: he somehow sensed that the golden plate was very important and sought to preserve an impression of the etchings on it by rubbing a pencil’s lead over a page he had spread across the
paiza
.’ She paused. ‘He probably feared the
paiza
might be taken away from him and took this precaution to retain a record of the markings.
‘The
paiza
itself is written in Mandarin Chinese and Persian, the languages one would expect a traveller moving East to West to encounter,’ Susan went on. ‘Then there are what I presume to be notes by the original holder of the
paiza
, notes that were copied by Ralph Wando on a different page of his Bible. These notes were most likely to have been etched on the obverse portion of the metal plate. Right at the top of the first portion of the “notes” is the reference to the Mar Yul.’
She paused, then said with a smile, ‘This is corroborated by the contents of the letter. That’s a good thing.’
‘So before he died, the Teacher was trying to tell us as much as he could from what is written on the
paiza
,’ Ashton mused.
‘And how are you so sure these notes date back to the time of Kublai Khan?’ Peter asked Susan, including Ashton as well with a glance. ‘I mean, what if they belonged to a later period and were, therefore, unrelated to the version Marco Polo has written about?’
‘Good question,’ Susan responded, sounding impressed. ‘We can pin these notes down to a specific period because they’re written in the so-called “state script” that Kublai Khan’s Buddhist advisor had devised for him in 1270
CE
by amalgamating the scripts of all the languages in use within the kingdom. It was doomed from the word go, because, apart from the Great Khan himself, it had no takers. It died a natural death on his demise.’ Susan continued, ‘It is clear that these notes have been etched inexpertly by an amateur; the lines are not symmetrical and the etchings are not even. This just might be the coded “map” we’re looking for.’
‘Sorry for sounding like a party pooper,’ Peter interjected, ‘but how do you just jump to that? This being a “map” and all?’
‘You’re right,’ Susan admitted, conceding he had a point. ‘I could be mistaken about that one. But there are reasons why I think these “notes” represent a map: first, what we already talked about – the “key” at the top of the notes; second, the next part consists of separate words written in the “state script” which, when assembled, make no sense at all, but…’ She stopped and, after an almost theatrical pause, continued, ‘They are arranged in a sequence.’
‘What a happy occurrence!’ Ashton commented with a smile, ‘mathematicians love sequences!’
‘Exactly!’ she concurred, smiling back. ‘For a mathematician, sequences are never random; they
always
mean something. These words, in groups of six, are arranged geometrically: two rows of three symbols, followed by a space. Then another group of six symbols, followed by a space and again six symbols.’ She nodded emphatically. ‘This is definitely a map, with each group representing a place.’
‘One last question,’ Peter cut in, cheekily raising his hand.
‘Of course.’ Susan was pleasantly surprised that he had actually followed what she had been saying.
‘In all the treasure hunts I participated in as a kid, the last symbol, where the “treasure” was supposed to be hidden, was the “X”. If what you’re saying is correct, the last symbol or group of symbols should denote this Shambhala place, shouldn’t it?’
‘
Madre mia
!’ Susan exclaimed, clapping her hands. ‘And there, you’re absolutely right, Peter! Only the author of this code has made it easy for us; at the end of three groups of six symbols, there are just two more. I haven’t yet got one, but the last one is the clincher. It’s the Tibetan symbol for the
Antahkarna,
or “rainbow bridge”, which is supposed to connect our present life to the next, higher plane; it’s the standard metaphor for Shambhala.’
Susan picked up the pages in her hands and showed Peter a symbol; it was a cube, with all three planes highlighted.
For a while, no one spoke. But as Susan looked at them, she could sense that the men were taking her idea much more seriously; some of her excitement had also rubbed off on them.
‘So to make sense of the sequence, we need to find this “key”,’ Ashton said, finally breaking the silence. ‘Do you have any idea where we should begin?’
‘Not really,’ Susan replied, shaking her head ruefully. ‘“Seat of the Mar Yul” probably refers to the palace of the rulers at that time. “Dogs” – I still have to figure that one out.’ She began brushing her hair with repetitive, mechanical strokes, lost in thought. ‘Could be statues of some sort.’